Tag: Class Warfare

I’ll be honest. I haven’t read the decision on “Obamacare” by the Supremes. I left that to my lawyer acquaintances. I read the spin with disgust and dismay. I usually read pending legislation before opining, but c’mon, so much has been made of this thus far that it doesn’t really take a rocket scientist to figure out what would, hence did happen. The Supremes backed forced-purchase. The decision pivoted on the idea that the mandate “was justified as a tax. Because people who don’t obtain insurance pay a tax to the IRS, the mandate was within Congress’s power to raise taxes for the general welfare. As a result, the Affordable Care Act was upheld.”

Got that? Its ok because its ALWAYS ok to tax the poor more. If you can’t afford to directly pay the Insurance Companies, the Government will make you pay it as a tax and give it to the mother-fuckers anyway, dig?

That is the real problem. But Duh-merica’s wee heads are exploding for all the wrong reasons. And Liberaloi-duhs are celebrating against their own interests too.

Are you a teacher upset by your school’s resistance to allowing the original version of Huck Finn? I may have the solution–The Hunger Games.

I admit, I read the first page and thought I would hate it. The book is written in first-person present tense, has simplistic prose and starts with a huge load of back story. After the first chapter, though, I was hooked. The novel is bullet paced and winds through twists and turns that, for once, I did not anticipate.

So what does that have to do with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Well, Mark Twain’s 127 year old classic has racism as its theme: A young white runaway realizes he has more in common with a runaway black slave, than with affluent whites. The problem is that Twain was a product of his time and uses the “N-word” liberally throughout the text. Although class struggle and racism don’t bother school boards at all, the N-word apparently does, and the book is frequently banned from school libraries, English classes and social studies.

Enter the Hunger Games–a modern book with the theme of class warfare and imperialism that has an almost spooky resemblance to the Jasmine Revolution. (No small feat given the book’s copyright in 2008.) Because it is a futuristic novel, the N-word is no where to be found. In fact, there are no black people at all. That takes care of that. Instead, the former US is split into 12 Districts that are pitted against each other in a reality show that is must see TV. I mean the government makes you watch. Two children ages 12-18 are chosen by lottery from each district and forced to compete in a kill or be killed game for the benefit of the inhabitants of the Capitol district. Throw in media control, massive government spying, police state, and the exploitation of the periphery districts by the Capitol district and the themes of this modern novel should provide more than enough material for a discussion of the problems of modern society and how they are portrayed in literature.

And if you still miss the racism aspect of Mark Twain, well how about talking about the foundation of racism–artificial adversarial relationships that keep those without power from forming solidarity for the benefit of the powerful.

While we don’t keep it political on RTD all the time, we’re not just all music all the time. We come from the era of Public Enemy, where the music was a tool that helped the outside world understand what was going on. Also helped those within the scene get a better understanding of the ills that life tried throwing at us. On this leak from the forthcoming rockthedub fifth anniversary compilation, FiF, AWK and Y-Love don’t hold back in trying to educate those who might sleep on the ills of the GOP.

Note: Y-Love & AWKWORD will be IN MADISON, WI on Thursday, April 7, on the streets, filming a video for this song!… If you want to get involved, email TheWisconsinSong[at]gmail.com

Doing away with the cap on Social Security tax would allow the Social Security trust fund to continue in the black indefinitely and the nation would never need to confront the fact that this peoples’ trust is the one debt elected officials don’t want to pay. It could also raise benefits and there might even be enough left over to lower instead of raise the retirement age.

A diary not about the more sensible but unobtainable goal of getting the rich to pay in support of the rest of the nation. Instead of removing the tax cap to support the middle class, remove the cap and increase the benefit schedule. This does not shore up Social Security as much but it could get another class of people interested, people with influence.

You can find the transcript here. The interview is really worth viewing and really worth passing around. A proposal that says we don’t have to go after the middle and lower classes and should go after the rich coming from an elected official was refreshing.

You too, could one day be a Millionaire, or perhaps even a Billionaire, so don’t ruin it for everyone, by raising Taxes on the Wealthy. Afterall, someday it could be you. In their America, anything’s possible.

Most everyone, wants to be rich someday. It’s part of the American Dream — or at least it used to be. But the way things have been going lately it seems the Dream has been downsized to:

I just hope I can find/keep my Job.

Despite the somber work-a-day reality most people face, far too many still take the Republican dream, at face value. By following their lead, they hope to strike it rich someday, too.

Even though the costs of medication, transportation, and utilities are rising, we have already denied seniors a modest Cost of Living Adjustment to their Social Security payments for two years.

The war in Afghanistan costs the taxpayers $190 million PER DAY.

We will continue to spend $1.3 billion every week on war in Afghanistan for the indefinite future while we force our seniors to make tough choices between their medications and their food; their rent and their heat; their phone and gas for their car.”

hello, it’s Xan. I haven’t written for awhile but I have been thinking hard about my sacrificial list.

You probably don’t shop much, having the important work of the Senate and the Debt Commission and all of that, so you may not have noticed that bird seed is getting ver (I am shortening words from here on out for the sake of austerity) expensy. While wheeling my cart down and about the store, it came to my limited attention span that bird seed is spendy now. This may be a good place for me to continue my sacrificial list. Thus, no bird seed.

Comes Saturday morning and I awake to the comforting sound of birds singing. Birdsong – it’s a pret word, isn’t it. Then sadly I remembered I didn’t buy any birdseed. Now my yard is not fancy, nor are the birds that frequent it. They are mostly sparrows, little brown things – but they sing their little hearts out. Unlike many of the men to whom I have been kind – the birds more than pay me back with melodies throughout the day and into twilight (I considered using the word “dusk” here in the interests of austerity but “dusk” is such an ugly sounding word. Even “the lesser people” are struck by the beauty of language. This may be problematic for the Debt Commission.) They are not wily like the worm-finding robins, nor are they feisty like the noisy bluejays – but their music can be likened to Bach on good mornings. It made me sad that they no longer came to the bird feeders – it took about 4 days before they understood there would be no sustenance at my house. And so there was no music in my home that was not powered by electronics – a sad moment indeed.

Then it struck me – my mother’s kitchen. How she did I do not know. But no one – no one, even her arch enemy, Mrs. Santangelo, left her kitchen without some little thing to eat or drink. It was like a lighteni blt – it is who I am. I am my mother, especially in her kitchen. To the store for birdseed – where I bought 2 25-pound bags and they came back – lyrical and loud but mostly lyrical. They are forgiving little brown things, kind-hearted and industrious.

So now the dilemma: What can the new sacrifice be? At this point, my two dogs seem to be nervous – perhaps worried that the arm of sacrifice will smite them. It will not, of course. But it’s pleasant to see them paying attention to my “commands” for a change. Of course, as a “lesser person” my commands are tender and tentative – we, like the little brown sparrows don’t expect much, don’t really need that much and will sing for kindnesses received.

The problem is we can expect no kindnesses from The Debt Commission – and rightly so say the commentators – But mostly the tators are without heart or sense for that matter, and even my mother may have sent them from her kitchen with an empty tin cup.

Would you be kind enough to ask your fellow commishes what sacrifices they have been making – perhaps I could find a hint there of where I can make a difference in America’s future. And, by the way, I went to your site again and found no mention of your sacrifices. I know you have been busy what with the losses and all – but perhaps you can put this on your to-do list. “List sacrifices for constitutents’ morale.”

But really, don’t worry about our morale – we don’t look to the Senate or God forbid the Debt Commission for courage or comfort – please disabuse yourself of that. We look to each other and to the little brown things in our life who deliver.

Update: A friend of mine called me and said It’s “Ein bischen etwas.” or so her family said when she was a child – In Italian, I think it’s un piccola cosa.

Just last month, the Chamber lobbied vigorously to defeat the Creating American Jobs and End Offshoring Act, which would have given companies a two-year payroll tax holiday, reducing the amount of Social Security taxes they would have to pay, for new employees who replace workers doing similar jobs overseas. The bill would have also ended tax provisions that encourage the outsourcing of jobs.

“Replacing a job that is based in another country with a domestic job does not stimulate economic growth or enhance the competitiveness of American worldwide companies,” Chamber executive vice president Bruce Josten claimed in a letter to senators.

When the $787 billion stimulus bill was passed, the Chamber fought tooth and nail to ensure that a provision requiring that all stimulus projects include only Americans-made products and services was NOT included.

The Federal Reserve put out its quarterly report on fund flows today, which shows corporate balance sheets more or less flat at $1.845 trillion, compared to $1.847 trillion in the first quarter of 2010.

[…]

“Companies weren’t stuck like a deer in the headlights because of regulatory or political uncertainty,” he said. Instead, he says corporate directors have been spending on capital expenditures, M&A, and buybacks and dividends. [ … according to Anthony Carfang, from at Chicago-based corporate treasury consultancy Treasury Strategies.]

Dividends and buybacks, like the ones announced after market close yesterday by Texas Instruments, are on the rise […]

Be afraid, be very afraid, people — Or so the Corporate Speakers are telling us.

All across Europe recently there have been wave after wave of co-ordinated general strikes and massive demonstrations showing a solidarity and a unity across unions representing different kinds of workers in different countries, different levels of skill, against austerity proposals by governments, that put to shame the levels of public street activism in the US and Canada.

Fresh off a summer lecturing in Greece and France, economist, author, and Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Richard D. Wolff, well-known for his work on Marxian economics, economic methodology and class analysis, Yale University Ph.D. in Economics, and Professor at The New School University in New York City, gives his analysis on the massive European mobilizations and strikes. He also compares the US movement to the European one, and find the European workers to be much more advanced in their struggle.

This extraordinary unity is all built around a central demand which can be conveyed by their chief slogan: we are the working people who produce the profits, the goods, and the service of the capitalist economy; we are not going to pay for its crisis. And that’s really the central demand, that if the banks and the corporations and the speculations produced a crisis that working people had no role in-and I want to remind viewers that in Europe they didn’t even have the mortgage kind of crisis in European countries that we had here; it was a crisis of the banking sector, the financial, large corporations, and so on-the demand of the people is, we are not going to be made to pay. You’re not going to solve this economic crisis by having the government borrow money, throw the money at the banks and the big corporations, bail them out, and then make the mass of people pay by cutting government payrolls, by cutting government services, all those things called austerity.